GA Gardner was born in 1969 in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and migrated to the USA in 1988 where he earned his BA in Visual Arts and MA in Educational Technology from San Francisco State University. He also received a Ph.D. in Art Education from The Ohio State University. There he focused on Computer Art Education. When he emerged in 1995, he was already considered an international expert on the subjects of Computer Art Education, Computer Graphics and Animation, and a pioneer in the the area of large format digital fine art. Gardner created crisp and detailed three-dimensional images on water color paper that discussed the social elements of Caribbean cultures.

His work has been exhibited at various museums and galleries in the USA, Asia and the Caribbean, including the James E. Lewis Museum of Art; Paterson Museum, New Jersey; Nanjing College of Art, China; Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts, St Croix, USVI, Bergen Museum, New Jersey and Morton Fine Art, DC. He has been the subject of numerous articles and catalog essays. He has been awarded artist residencies in the Caribbean and Asia.

GA Gardner currently lives and works in Washington DC and Brooklyn NY.

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About ANDREI PETROV (NYC, b. USA; layered oil on canvas):

Andrei Petrov, Morrocan Field Trip, 48″x60″, oil on canvas

Andrei Petrov explores memory in his organic abstract paintings. His paintings probe the distortion, incompleteness and rare moments of clarity in the shadows of memory. Each piece portrays the intrinsic struggle and selective inclusion or exclusion of details in the process of recollection. At times, sharpness occurs in the rear of the picture plane while the out of focus, obscured areas, exist in a larger scale toward the foreground and make reference to the inscrutable nature of long and short term memory.

Petrov’s paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally in prestigious collections and can be viewed at The Four Seasons Hotel in both Washington, DC and Punta Mita, Mexico, The Fairmont Hotel in Chicago and The Conrad Hotel, Miami. His paintings have also had cameos in the following films, The Royal Tenenbaums, Autumn in New York, Kate and Leopold, The Business of Strangers and Words and Lyrics.

“The production of a painting begins with a pencil or ink drawing on paper which I extrapolate from and edit as I work the canvas. First with pencil or charcoal and then with color washes done with acrylic or ink, I map the raw canvas and allow it to be ingrained with the materials. Once satisfied with the composition and balance, the surface is sealed with a clear acrylic so as to allow the use of oil based pigments. Handmade tools are used to drag, apply, scrape and blend the paint across the canvas plane creating a contrast of textures which resemble collaged elements. Sandpaper and rags also propel the evolution of the work. The addition and subtraction of paint are meant to act as a metaphor for the intentions and motives for which the paintings are based.” – Andrei Petrov